Opinion: Youth work must be rewarded properly

My own early experience of residentials probably provides a pretty good model, although there were far fewer formal regulations in those days. There were always at least three adults and usually no more than 10 young people. That was the capacity of the minibus, after all. The senior youth worker was the driver, another colleague did the logistics (food, cooking and cleaning rotas) and I stayed up all night.

Over the years, the regulations tightened but this preferred staffing level diminished and the minibuses got bigger. We often went away with two workers and 12 young people, and many of the rules were simply impossible to implement. The driver - me - simply couldn't have a rest period of half an hour at each end of the journey - there were things to be done. If situations got heavy late into the night - even if I had gone to bed - both workers were often needed to settle things down.